Senecio (redirected from senecios)

Senecio 

a genus of plants of the family Compositae. Members are perennial, annual, or biennial herbs, shrubs, and arborescent plants (including rosetted trees). The flowers are yellow, orange, purple, or violet; the marginal ones are ligulate and carpellary and the median ones, tubular monoclinous and gathered into calathides; the involucres are for the most part monostichous. There are more than 1,500 (according to other data, as many as 3,000) species; they are ubiquitous, but mainly found in South Africa, the Mediterranean, and temperate regions of Asia and America.

There are approximately 100 species in the USSR. Senecio vulgaris grows mainly as a weed near dwellings, in gardens, and in planted fields. S. jacobaea is found along forest edges and in shrubbery, wastelands, and fields. S. rhombifolius (formerly S. platyphyllus) grows in the Caucasus and is a medicinal plant; all its parts contain alkaloids (platyphyllin and sarracin, for example) that are used as spasmolytic and analgesic agents. Many species of Senecio are cultivated as ornamentals; some are sometimes assigned to the genus Cineraria.

REFERENCE

Shishkin, B. K. “Rod Senecio L.” In Flora SSSR, vol. 26. Moscow-Leningrad, 1961.

T. V. EGOROVA